08/25 Links Pt2: WFP board member's $100M anti-Israel election ‘war chest’; Cambridge’s Farah Ahmed: study engineering ‘to produce weaponry for Jihad’

From Ian:

UN charity once chaired by Hunter Biden stands by Texas money man after Post reveals DHS probe into $100M anti-Israel ‘war chest’

A UN-backed charity once chaired by Hunter Biden is standing by a Texas money man even as federal investigators probe his group’s possible ties to sanctioned Palestinian organizations, The Post has learned.

The World Food Program USA wiped its entire leadership roster from its website just days after this newspaper revealed the federal inquiry into PFF and its backers, including Basil Qunibi and a group of well-heeled Palestinian donors.

But despite the mounting controversy, the nonprofit insists the founder of Austin-based Atom Investors isn’t going anywhere and blamed the bizarrely timed disappearance of his profile on a routine IT issue.

“Both our staff and board pages are down for maintenance,” a WFP USA spokesperson told The Post. “Basil Qunibi is a member of our Board of Directors.”

They added that the IT work “will conclude by next week.” The rest of the organization’s website, including its donation portals, mission pages, and press releases, remained fully operational on Tuesday afternoon.

The Washington-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit raises money for the United Nations’ food assistance agency. Hunter Biden chaired the organization from 2011 to 2015, which overlapped with some of his controversial business dealings while Joe Biden served as vice-president under Barack Obama.

The website change followed The Post’s story detailing a Department of Homeland Security investigation into PFF and its backers.

It revealed the involvement of Qunibi, Australian billionaire and racecar driver Yasser Shahin, and Bassema Yousef, a Democratic fundraiser who is close to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in the pro-Palestinian group.

Sources said federal investigators are scrutinizing the trio’s involvement in PFF, an alleged $100 million UK-based political ‘war chest’ that helps fund anti-Israel messaging and provides support to Palestinian activists.

The feds are tracking the entity’s cross-border financial flows tied to anti-Israel advocacy and possible links to sanctioned organizations.

Authorities have not charged any of the trio with wrongdoing. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.

But Qunibi’s representatives have since retreated from initial claims made to The Post that he did not finance PFF.

Maureen Lipman slams ‘sanctimonious’ actors who ‘forced’ Boy George out of West End role over pro-Israel song

Dame Maureen Lipman has defended Boy George in an op-ed in the Spectator discussing her own 13-week experience performing Allegra amidst the palpable burden of pro-Palestine protests.

In May, the Jewish actor and JC contributor found herself the target of the anti-Israel mob when due to perform the musical in Aberdeen.

The Scottish city’s branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) shared a graphic of Lipman with horns and holding a pitchfork, claiming on its Instagram that she had “openly voiced extremist Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab views”, and urging supporters to sign a petition against her performance.

The group further labelled her “an open supporter of the settler-colonial, apartheid state of Israel, which continues to commit genocide, and is ethnically cleansing the West Bank”.

On finishing her most recent West End stint, she wrote in her op-ed: “The gang of protestors who tried to boycott me from theatres in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Bath for believing in the state of Israel’s right to exist went underground in London.

“They were replaced by an altruistic band of brethren of all faiths called Mensch, who turned up to protest against the protestors. God bless them.”

She went on to talk about Boy George, who has, in recent weeks, also become the target of anti-Israel protesters after defending Israel most notably in his new song We Will Dance Again.

Lipman wrote that while her West End experience went off without any protest, “A group of sanctimonious actors forced Boy George out of his contract to play King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar.

“They allegedly pressured producer Michael Harrison into sacking Boy George because he has, in a brave song called We Will Dance Again, defended Israel’s right to defend itself after the Hamas pogrom.

“In other words, Boy George has a different political stance from some of the cast. Powerful people. The show itself concerns a nice Jewish rabbi fighting prejudice from angry mobs in his ancestral home of Israel.”

Lauded Australian director Kosky decries anti-Semitism

The main character of The Trial is arrested and finds himself trapped in an absurdly complicated legal system, trying desperately to find out what he has done wrong.

Readers of the novel never discover the answer, but in Kosky's version the trial is an examination of the author's Judaism, an attribute which is sometimes forgotten in discussion of his work.

Oh, and there's singing and dancing - including a tap dancing Rabbi.

The production is in German, Hebrew, and Yiddish, with surtitles translated from Kafka's stories - so for English-speaking audiences that haven't read Kafka, they will be reading him during the show.

In previous years Kosky has brought operatic productions to Adelaide, and in 2024 The Threepenny Opera, also with the Berliner Ensemble.

AAP spoke to the director just before the final block of public hearings for Australia's anti-Semitism royal commission, called in response to the terrorist attack at Bondi beach which saw 15 people killed and another 40 wounded.

Melbourne-born Kosky, 59, hasn't lived in Australia for 26 years, but laments the nation's public discourse, which he says has morphed from legitimate political criticism into discussion so polarised it has become terrifying and dangerous.

"We have crossed over into 'should the state of Israel exist?' which has never happened in any other country ... (It) leads us into rampant 21st century anti-Semitism, of a type that we have not seen for decades," he said.

He's vehemently opposed to the Israeli government, but cautions that Jewish people from both Israel and the diaspora are being forced to take reductive positions on complex issues, in response to a performative moral outrage from non-Jews.

"You can be a good Jew if you basically disown Israel, disown Zionism, disown Jewish culture, and say absolutely free Palestine," he said.

K has absolutely nothing to do with anti-Semitism, Gaza, Israel or the Holocaust, said Kosky - it's fundamentally a show about Jewish spirituality and culture.

Perhaps that's timely, as he perceives Jewish people again becoming a scapegoat for the world's evils.

"It's a perfect storm and I don't know how we get out of it, because this is the time you want dialogue, compassion, empathy - most of the yelling offers no solutions."

K is at Her Majesty's Theatre from March 4-7.

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08/25 Links Pt1: The Undisputed Answer to Israel's Legitimacy; A Realistic National Strategy for Israel; PA Schools Glorify Oct 7 in Disturbing New Footage; Israel evacuates UNRWA compound in Jerusalem

From Ian:

The Undisputed Answer to Israel's Legitimacy

I am an Arab Muslim and have spent years advocating for peace and reconciliation between Muslims and Jews. I have never understood why acknowledging the ancient Jewish connection to this land should be considered threatening to Muslims. The Dead Sea Scrolls are one example that demolishes the claim that Jewish attachment to the land is a recent political invention created by Europeans in the 19th or 20th centuries.

The ancient manuscripts found in caves near the Dead Sea were written by Jews living in this region more than 2,000 years ago. I do not see something that belongs to a civilization completely foreign to me. I see part of the religious and historical landscape from which Christianity emerged and which Islam itself repeatedly acknowledges. This is why I believe Muslims should be among the last people to deny ancient Jewish history.

The Quran is filled with the history of the Children of Israel. Moses is mentioned more frequently in the Quran than any other prophet. The Quran speaks of King David, Solomon, Aaron, Joseph and the tribes of Israel. It acknowledges the Torah and repeatedly places its own religious message in conversation with earlier Jewish and Christian traditions. There is therefore something deeply strange, in my view, about some Muslims feeling that we must erase Jewish history in order to defend Arab or Palestinian rights.

Peace will never be built by creating historical amnesia. For decades, political arguments surrounding Israel have frequently attempted to deny Jewish history altogether, pretending that a nation did not exist on its ancestral homeland. The Dead Sea Scrolls tell us that Jewish communities lived in this land, developed religious institutions in this land, and debated the meaning of their faith in this land centuries before Islam appeared and centuries before modern European nationalism existed.

History cannot become something we recognize only when it supports our political position. If archaeology proves something uncomfortable, we should not destroy the archaeology. We should adjust our understanding. For Muslims in particular, recognizing the Jewish people's ancient connection to this land should not frighten us. It does not diminish Islam. It simply requires intellectual honesty.

Prof. Efraim Inbar: A Realistic National Strategy for Israel

Israel remains small in both territory and population compared to most of its Middle Eastern rivals, and despite its economic prosperity, its resources remain limited. Its long-term survival cannot be taken for granted. Israel must therefore maintain constant readiness for armed conflict and for the battle over its legitimacy.

Any state must align its goals with the resources at its disposal and avoid overreach. Unlike a great power, a small state cannot set the rules of the international system or significantly shape its regional environment. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, understood that military power alone could not compel Israel's neighbors to make peace. Israel could build an "iron wall" (a concept coined by his political rival Ze'ev Jabotinsky) that would thwart its neighbors' plans to destroy it, in the hope that over time, the states of the region would come to accept it.

The military achievements against Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon, the establishment of security zones in Syria and in Lebanon, and the attacks on Iran's nuclear and missile infrastructure in 2025 and 2026 have undoubtedly improved Israel's security situation and regional standing. Israel demonstrated exceptional military and intelligence capabilities and exacted a heavy price from its enemies.

Yet military victories are time-bound in their political effects, and the motivation to challenge Israel's existence has remained persistently high. There is limited basis for assuming that even severe military defeat necessarily erodes an adversary's willingness to pursue long-term strategic objectives.

The main assumption behind Israel's national strategy should remain, regrettably, that the Middle East does not change quickly. The region remains a source of religious extremism, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation. Israel continues to lack legitimacy in much of the Arab and Muslim worlds. Israel's improved regional standing resulted from recognition of Israeli military power rather than from a fundamental shift in public attitudes.

Israel cannot subdue Iran, a nation of 90 million people led by an Islamic clerical elite that is relatively insensitive to the costs of sustained confrontation. Israel can, however, significantly degrade Iran's capacity to inflict harm upon it. Hamas and Hizbullah also cannot be decisively defeated so long as they retain substantial popular support and continue to receive state backing for military development and funding.

Israel has not succeeded in disarming Hamas in Judea and Samaria, where it has maintained military control since 1967. These organizations can be weakened, and their operational capabilities significantly reduced, but they cannot be fully eliminated as long as they retain mass domestic support and receive substantial external assistance.

When no attainable political solution is in sight, the most realistic goal becomes the denial of enemy capabilities and objectives. Israeli military operations are designed precisely to prevent the other side from achieving its strategic aims.

Amb. Alan Baker: The Penchant for Blaming Israel and Jews for Everything

There is something deeply troubling about the manner in which Israel and the Jewish people have once again become the focus of an extraordinary campaign of political condemnation, public vilification, and international hostility. Public figures feel able to malign Israel and Jews in sweeping, inflammatory and often baseless terms - and to do so with the apparent confidence that social media will provide them with millions of receptive followers. Hostility toward Israel and Jews has become socially acceptable, politically advantageous, and increasingly immune from serious scrutiny.

In Europe, when governments and political leaders in Ireland, Spain, Canada, Australia, and Britain appear willing to embrace, or lend credence to, false allegations of genocide and deliberate starvation against Israel and its leaders without the factual and legal basis for such allegations, one must ask whether European governments have become incapable, or unwilling, to resist politically motivated campaigns against Israel.

Many Western governments have historically sponsored, financed, and supported the Oslo process and subsequent Israeli-Palestinian agreements. Those agreements created reciprocal obligations and were intended to provide the legal and political framework for resolving outstanding issues through negotiation. Yet when states that helped create and endorse that framework subsequently support initiatives that bypass, weaken, or undermine its fundamental commitments, the credibility of their own diplomatic guarantees is inevitably called into question.

One must therefore ask: what confidence can Israel, or any state, place in international assurances concerning future agreements if the states providing those assurances are themselves prepared to disregard or circumvent the commitments embodied in existing agreements? The issue is whether fundamental principles of international relations and treaty commitments are to be respected.

Israel appears repeatedly to be treated as an exceptional case: subjected to an extraordinary level of international scrutiny, condemnation and political pressure. Legitimate criticism is an essential component of democratic discourse. But criticism becomes something entirely different when it is selective, disproportionate, detached from facts, or based upon standards that are not applied consistently to other states and peoples.

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Could Hamas' kites be research into fiber optic drones?

As HonestReporting reported this week, several kites recently crossed from Gaza into Israeli territory. Some reportedly had strings between two and four kilometers long. Israeli officials suspect that Hamas may have been testing Israel's response to objects crossing the border. 

Israel's decision to respond forcefully to kites being flown from Gaza has been mocked online. After all, these were apparently ordinary kites, without explosives or incendiary materials. Why should one of the world's most technologically advanced militaries care about a kite?

Obviously they are not kids' kites. A four kilometer string is enough evidence that the kites are being sent out for a military purpose.

Warfare has changed. And in this case, apparently primitive technology may be relevant to one of the newest and most difficult threats facing the IDF:  the experiments could have some connection to fiber-optic drones.

For years, one of the most effective defenses against small drones has been electronic warfare. An FPV drone is normally controlled by radio signals, while sending video back to its operator the same way. Jam those signals and the drone can lose its connection, crash, or become useless.

The wars in Ukraine produced an extraordinarily simple workaround: don't use radio.

A fiber-optic FPV drone carries a spool of extremely thin optical fiber. As the drone flies, the cable unspools behind it, maintaining a physical connection all the way back to the operator. Commands travel through the fiber in one direction and live video in the other. There is no radio control signal to jam and no GPS signal that the drone needs in order to reach its target.

This isn't theoretical. Hezbollah has already been using these drones against Israel.

Reuters reported in May that Hezbollah had sharply increased its use of cheap fiber-optic FPV attack drones in southern Lebanon. An experienced Ukrainian drone operator who examined Hezbollah footage told Reuters that one of the spools appeared consistent with about 10 kilometers of fiber-optic cable. The Associated Press similarly described Hezbollah's drones as using fiber "the width of dental floss," allowing them to bypass conventional electronic jamming.

And these aren't exotic weapons requiring a secret Iranian military laboratory. Hezbollah reportedly assembles them locally using commercially available components and 3D-printed parts, at an estimated cost of only $300-$400 per drone.

In fact, you can buy much of the technology yourself.

An American drone retailer called GetFPV currently advertises a 10-kilometer fiber-optic canister for FPV drones for $890. It contains more than ten kilometers of 0.26 mm fiber, weighs less than a kilogram including the fiber, and comes with the optical module needed for the drone. The company specifically advertises it as "immune to RF interference and signal jamming."

Another retailer, United UAV, sells a 10-kilometer drone fiber spool for $495. Its fiber weighs only 80 grams per kilometer and is designed for two-way transmission of video and control data. Manufacturers advertise versions running 20, 30 and even 50 kilometers.

These canisters are only a few pounds, and can easily be smuggled into Gaza. Hamas doesn't need to manufacture it.  

A 50 kilometer fiber cable and canister weighs 10 kg. That could reach Beersheva.

There are plenty of things Hamas could learn cheaply from experiments involving objects crossing the border while trailing extremely long lightweight lines: where lines snag on buildings, fences, trees and other obstacles; what trajectories are practical; what Israel detects; how quickly the IDF responds; and which approaches across the border are relatively unobstructed.

This is one of the strange lessons of modern warfare. Increasingly sophisticated defenses can make seemingly primitive technologies useful again. We saw this on October 7 - Israel invested in sophisticated electronic surveillance and didn't consider a mass of people and trucks breaking through the fence. Israel has spent enormous resources developing electronic systems capable of detecting and jamming hostile communications. The enemy's answer may be a cheap quadcopter connected to its operator by an almost invisible strand of glass.

Hezbollah has already shown that this works. Hamas knows that too.

So when Hamas-controlled Gaza suddenly starts sending kites across the border trailing strings several kilometers long, the IDF would be foolish to laugh at them simply because they are kites.

(h/t Irene)

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Australia funded antisemitic Islamic media group

From The Australian:

Home Affairs funded a Muslim media group that claimed Australia “faked antisemitic attacks to save Israel” and platformed an antisemitic influencer who was later deported, the antisemitism royal commission has heard.

OnePath Network, an Islamic education media company based in Australia, was a beneficiary of a Home Affairs grant for $308,000 “to support social cohesion and sustainability of independent multicultural media outlets” for use between June 16 this year and June 30 next year. Mr Bender said the interview “raises at least a very substantial concern that this grantee is acting inappropriately”.

A year earlier, he said, it had posted a video titled “How Australia faked antisemitic attacks to save Israel”, which remained online with more than 100,000 views.

Sure enough, here's the grsnt page for OnePath. 

How is it possible that Home Affairs didn't even look at the page? A search on "Israel" shows these videos, which do not exactly scream "social cohesion:"

Does this look like something that should be subsidized by tax dollars?

There's a large amount of money earmarked for Muslim and Arab groups for the same "social cohesion." 

The Australian Government will provide $3.8 million across 41 organisations for multicultural projects designed to enhance and foster community integration. This will allow funding to reach the below communities affected by the conflict as soon as possible:  

$1.24 million will support 12 organisations to scale-up or adjust their existing capabilities to give initial support to Palestinian, Muslim and Arab communities.

Approximately $2.6 million will support 28 organisations to deliver new social cohesion projects to support the local needs of Palestinian, Muslim and Arab communities.

How many of the other grantees spread hate?

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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08/24 Links Pt2: El-Sayed avoids naming Piker as he tries to distance himself from antisemitic remarks; The NYTs Is Weaponizing Islamophobia; Altalena shipwreck located after 78 years

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Gazaholics like Gary Lineker are a menace to reason

Are we going to talk about this? About the fact that Gary Lineker, footballer turned podcast impresario, for years one of the highest-paid talking heads at the BBC, is sharing a post from a group that said the Islamist butcher of ISIS had been a ‘kind, gentle’ soul? Worse, a post containing flagrant Holocaust inversion, where the Jewish homeland is grossly reimagined as the moral heir to Nazism? No? We’re just going to let it slide?

It is a testament to the virulence of Israelophobia, to its almost total conquest of the bourgeois mind, that stuff like this barely makes a ripple these days. There was a time when if a well-known public figure had hyped a CAGE post and platformed the noxious idea that the Jewish State is Nazi-like, people would have said: ‘Oh, what’s going on here?’ Not anymore. So thoroughly has polite society been colonised by bug-eyed anti-Israel animus that Lineker’s antics provoke no emotional response at all. Except perhaps haughty nods of approval.

Lineker has form. He parted ways with the BBC last year over what the press rather politely called ‘an anti-Semitism controversy’ – he had reposted a delirious rant about Zionism that was illustrated with a rat. Zionists as vermin? Classy. And then these people have the nerve to call others Nazis, despite their own giddy rehashing or reposting of the Nazi-era notion that Jews are the rodents of humanity.

Equating Zionism to Nazism is not clever political critique – it is raw, unadulterated bigotry. As the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance says in its working definition of anti-Semitism, it is racist to ‘[draw] comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’. Howard Jacobson said it best. There are untold wars from history that the Israel-Hamas War could be compared with, he said. The reason they compare it with the Holocaust is because their lowlife aim is ‘to wound Jews… to punish them with their own grief’. It’s Jew-shaming masquerading as pacifism.

Lineker sums up the commenting class’s pathological loss of moral proportion. The way these people talk, you’d think Israel’s pursuit of the Islamofascists of Hamas was the worst war of modernity, a ‘crime’ as racist and insane as the Nazis’. Yet Lineker himself is pals with a bloke – Alastair Campbell – whose political fabulism helped to launch a war in Iraq that on every moral metric was worse than what’s happened in the Middle East these past three years. I wonder if Lineker has ever called Al a rat-like killer of kids who’s not dissimilar to Hitler?

Lineker’s descent from dull but knowledgeable sports fella into the Zio-rat guy is proof that Israelophobia turns your mind to mush. The spotty kid who watches hours of Tate has nothing on these Boomers and geriatric millennials who brainlessly lap up every hyper-edited, context-free clip from Gaza as hard proof that Israel is a monstrous entity. This is real online radicalisation: the frying of a million middle-class brains by algorithmic bigotry and the moral pornography of war.

We are witnessing the great cognitive collapse of the Western liberal elite. A media establishment that once prided itself on scepticism and intellectual rigour now acts like an army of mind-wiped converts to a digital cult. Lineker and the rest of the Israel-wary class are not leading a moral awakening – they’re the latest victims of an internet ecosystem that rewards superficial emotionalism and punishes nuance. We need a Gazaholics Anonymous, stat.

Mamdani silent on calls for antisemitic Brooklyn pol’s resignation

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused on Monday to answer questions about a Brooklyn Democratic leader who promoted Henry Ford’s The International Jew and blamed a property dispute on “Zionists.”

Following an unrelated event in Queens, the mayor refused to answer on three separate occasions when Jewish Insider pressed him about Carmella Charrington, elected in June to the unpaid but important role of Democratic district leader. As first reported by JI, Charrington shared an Instagram video last fall boosting the notorious pamphlet series by the founder of the Ford Motor Company, a clip that blamed Jewish people for a range of societal maladies from slavery to the proliferation of alcohol and drugs.

Charrington first rose to prominence over a dispute over control of her family home, describing herself as a victim of deed theft, while New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ office found that the battle over her brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant was simply a complicated dispute over the estate of her Alzheimer’s-stricken father. Charrington has attacked the Jewish investors involved as “Zionists” and suggested some link between her situation and Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank.

After publication, Mamdani’s team reached out with a statement addressing Charrington’s attacks on the property investors.

“Suggesting that an alleged deed theft in Brooklyn is part of a global conspiracy involving Jewish people is blatant, reprehensible antisemitism,” the statement said. “Trafficking in these dangerous antisemitic tropes is vile and inexcusable.”

However, the administration did not answer a follow-up question about whether the mayor believed Charrington should step aside from her district leader role.

JI’s reporting on Charrington’s antisemitic posts prompted condemnations from James and from New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, though neither has called for her to step aside from her district leader position.

Meanwhile Democrats aligned with Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Rodneyse Bichotte — whom Charrington and her slate aim to remove — have demanded Charrington’s resignation.

Mamdani Hired Staffer for His Friend's Campaign Who Was Later Arrested for 'Terroristic Threat' Against Teenage 'Lexus-Driving, Israel-Loving Zionists'

Zohran Mamdani hired a campaign staffer who was later arrested for making a "terroristic threat" against Jewish students, the Washington Free Beacon can reveal. Mamdani made the hire in 2018, when he was running the failed State Senate campaign of the now-disgraced journalist and Mamdani hagiographer Ross Barkan.

The staffer hired by Mamdani, Iman Abdul, was arrested in August 2025 after posting a Google Maps screenshot of the location of Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences in Manhattan Beach.

"If anyone needs a public school in NYC to attack for whatever reason … Lexus driving Israhell [sic] loving Zionisits [sic] all attend here," she added in a caption to the now-deleted post.

The public school is in a Brooklyn neighborhood with a large Jewish population. The school is 63 percent students of color, and 66 percent of the student body are "economically disadvantaged," according to city records. There are also multiple Jewish schools in the area that serve high school students.

Abdul, who went on to work as a youth organizer for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), was promptly arrested by the NYPD and charged with making a "terroristic threat," acting in a manner injurious to a child, aggravated harassment, and making a threat of mass harm, the New York Post reported at the time.

She pleaded guilty earlier this month to aggravated harassment as a hate crime, a felony. She was given a sweetheart deal by Brooklyn's far-left district attorney, Eric Gonzalez (D.), which allowed her to avoid jail time. In exchange for completing 20 counseling sessions, the charges would be knocked down to a misdemeanor, Post über-sleuth Susan B. Edelman reported on her Substack.

What quietly went unreported, however, was that Abdul was a paid canvasser for Barkan's unsuccessful 2018 campaign for New York State Senate in Brooklyn—earning $540 between July and August of that year from Team Barkan, state campaign finance records show.

‘Felt like a lynch mob,’ mom of 4-year-old says of NYC-funded festival, in which performer accuses Israel of ‘war crimes’

A Brooklyn Jewish mom expected an entertaining outing when she took her 4-year-old to a recent puppet festival. Instead, she found herself and her son listening to a recitation of Israel’s “war crimes” and keffiyah-clad performers taking part in a Gaza flotilla during a show billed as being about the quirks of living in New York City.

The performances were part of International Puppet Fringe Festival NYC, which is partially funded by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts, and took place in lower Manhattan from Aug. 12 to 16.

“They started with relatable New York skits, like about the pizza rat,” the mom, who declined to be named “because of the current environment,” told JNS, of a viral video of a rat dragging a discarded slice of pizza in a city subway station.

Another skit was about the perils of parking on New York City streets. “Performers had a cardboard car and showed the parallel parking shuffle,” when street cleaning rules require drivers to move their cars from one side of residential streets to the other, the mom said.

During the city-themed parts, the mom, who came to the United States from the former Soviet Union as a 7-year-old, told JNS that she “and the audience were one.”

“Everyone liked it,” she said.

After about 15 minutes, “a woman came in with a piece of paper and began reading a litany of accusations against Israel, and people began chanting ‘shame, shame,’” she told JNS.

Soon after that, eight performers grouped as a flotilla of ships bound for Gaza, the mother said.

“It felt like a lynch mob,” she told JNS. (JNS sought comment from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.)

“You feel naked, because you realize all these people knew who I was,” she said, since she didn’t join in the chant. “If I was by myself I would have just made an exit, but I was with my family and had a bunch of belongings.”

The experience was “pretty nauseating” for the mom.

“I’m an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, so antisemitism is why I’m here in the first place,” she told JNS. “To see it out in full effect in the daylight is awful.”

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08/24 Links Pt1: Netanyahu orders zero-tolerance response to Gaza kites; Netanyahu says Iran tried to kill one of his sons; Treasury launches ‘Operation Economic Outcast’ against Iran

From Ian:

'I wanted to die': Husband and wife kidnapped on October 7 reveal hell they endured in Gaza - from seeing girls 'beaten to pieces' and sexually assaulted to being starved and tortured

When Aviva Siegel thinks back to the 51 days she spent as a hostage in Gaza, the spectre of Israeli women returning from sexual assault, bleeding and bruised, crowds her mind.

'I'm a witness of all of the girls who were beaten up into pieces,' she tells the Daily Mail from her home in northern Israel.

When one girl came back after the abuse, 'she was purple; I wanted to die,' Aviva admits. 'That was one of the hardest moments: knowing what was happening to the young girls.'

Women around the 65-year-old were forced by their Hamas captors into wearing tight, barely fitting clothing, and showering naked in front of the terrorists – with one guard entering the bathroom and forcing a girl into performing oral sex.

She sits next to her husband, Keith, who was kidnapped alongside her from their former home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, 2023, one of the hardest-hit communities during Hamas' deadly onslaught.

It's almost been three years since that fateful day, yet the duo are still haunted by a mental 'album of pictures' from Gaza. 'Sometimes they run after me, and try to control me, and control my head,' Aviva says.

Keith, 67, who wasn't freed until after 484 days in the enclave, still finds himself obsessively showering, convinced he is somehow still imprinted by the 'dirt, the dust, the smoke' of the underground tunnel network.

'I even think, to this day, that I haven't been able to get rid of some of it. I sometimes have weird thoughts about not being clean,' he says.

Aviva, who was born in South Africa, released a book about the harrowing experience in March named 'The Main Thing is to Wake up to a New Morning,' written following her November 2023 release from captivity.

'Everybody who reads the book will feel what it's like to be a hostage in Gaza, underneath the ground, feeling like it's the end of the world,' she says.

Their story starts off the same as the thousands of other Israeli survivors of the massacre, which saw 1,200 people killed and 250 taken captive by Hamas.

On the morning of October 7, the couple bolted up at 6.30am to the sound of sirens blaring.

At 10.30am, Hamas gunmen stormed their home and broke into the safe room where they were hiding.

'They pulled us violently, brutally, out of the safe room, into our living room, and we were surrounded by between ten and 15 terrorists, screaming at each other and screaming at us,' Keith says.

During the brutal kidnapping, which saw militants ordering the couple to exit their home through the back window, Keith's ribs were broken and the meniscus in Aviva's knee was torn.

On the way to the car, terrorists shot Keith in the arm. Once in the vehicle, the couple sat, petrified, with one militant holding a knife to their faces and the other a gun.

Once in Gaza, Aviva was told to wear a hijab, while Keith was put in a robe.

The couple were kept together, but that brought little solace for Aviva, who was constantly terrified she'd witness her husband's death by asphyxiation in the torturous tunnel network.

In new book, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib argues Hamas has held Palestinian population hostage for 20 years

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who lived in the Gaza Strip from the age of 10-15, describes himself as an advocate for the Palestinian people. Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel, 33 of Alkhatib’s immediate and extended family members have been killed. But in his latest book, Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, Alkhatib argues that Hamas — rather than Israel — bears primary responsibility for the suffering and political stagnation of the people of Gaza.

Alkhatib is a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, where he directs Realign for Palestine, a project focused on pragmatic, nonviolent Palestinian advocacy. There, he denounces Hamas and advocates for Palestinian statehood alongside a secure Jewish state.

On Friday, Alkhatib spoke with Jewish Insider about his new book, his experiences growing up in Gaza and his outspoken criticism of Hamas. He also discussed the backlash he has faced from within his own community and why he believes that, ultimately, the terrorist group will have no role in the enclave’s future.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Jewish Insider: What inspired you to write Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, and what does your book add to public debate on this issue that isn’t already out there?
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: I wanted to weave in elements of my personal story with Gaza’s contemporary history, and add a human dimension to what I felt was Hamas’ devastating impact on the Palestinian people, their destructive role in setting back the Palestinian national project and the radicalization of the society.

I felt that there’s a consistent gap in the discourse from a Palestinian self-interested point of view. Even though many Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims will tell you privately how devastating Hamas is, there’s a disconnect in the discourse outside of Gaza versus inside Gaza — where you’ll find a ton more willingness to speak out, not just because of the consequences of Oct. 7, but because of the totality of the last 20 years of their rule.

One of the things that’s really frustrating is how there is this persistent narrative that Gazans are all Hamas, Gazans support Hamas. It’s very difficult for the other side, for the Israelis and the pro-Israel folks, to see the humanity of Palestinians because they so fundamentally believe that Gaza is inseparable from Hamas. Nevertheless, I argue and maintain that directly and indirectly, Hamas has taken Gaza captive and is holding 2 million people as hostages.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Repurposed Jihadists: Palestinian Terrorist Organizations Reborn as Political Parties

Why should Egypt be searching for a formula that would facilitate Hamas's return to Palestinian politics? Should Egypt and the rest of the international community not instead be demanding that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad surrender their weapons, dismantle their military structures, and disappear from Palestinian political life?

This new Palestinian "unity" alliance being planned would mean that instead of producing new and moderate Palestinian leaders, the election could result in a parliament in which Hamas, PIJ, and other rejectionist groups become major political power brokers and representatives of the Palestinians.

Is this really what Washington and its Western allies want? Are Western governments once again entertaining the fantasy that Islamist terrorist organizations can be transformed into legitimate political parties?

Hamas members can remove their military uniforms and put on suits. PIJ operatives can replace their rifles with election posters. They can talk about democracy, elections, and political partnership. None of that necessarily changes what they plan.

A "Western-driven disaster" could be developing in which accountability for Hamas is replaced by efforts to rescue the organization politically. "Hamas must never again be trusted with Palestinian politics. It should face the kind of post-defeat reckoning that Nazi Germany faced after World War Two or that the Baathist regimes of Iraq and Syria faced after their collapse. Why would a defeated terror organization that inflicted immense damage on its own people, its neighbors, and the entire region be offered an exit strategy or a political off-ramp? What possible campaign promise could Hamas present that makes it worthy of consideration in Palestinian elections? More war and jihad (holy war)? More governance failures? More corruption and theft of aid? Hamas is a spent force, a used and discarded object, a wrecked entity that cannot be repaired or repurposed." — Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American analyst from Gaza, X. August 21, 2026.

"Western governments, elites, and observers continue to display remarkable naivete about the Middle East, Arab political culture, and ideologically driven movements. Democracy is not simply voting at a booth. It is the creation of a democratic tradition, a free society, an open media environment, and a civic ethos that is not driven by ideology, religion, or extremism. The United States, under a Republican administration twenty years ago, made a grave mistake by insisting on elections that included Hamas. Will the Trump administration repeat the same error once again?" — Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, X, August 21, 2026.

The problem with the Western approach then was the assumption that participation in elections would moderate Hamas. Instead, Hamas used elections to gain legitimacy and power while retaining its weapons, ideology, and terrorist infrastructure.

There is no reason to believe that things would be different now. Hamas and PIJ might even accept cleverly-worded conditions to enable them to participate. They might go as far as saying they accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel. They will say whatever is necessary to get through the political door.

The real questions should be simpler: Will Hamas, PIJ and other Palestinian terrorist organizations recognize Israel's right to exist? Will they renounce terrorism? Will they surrender all their weapons? Will they dismantle their military wings? Will they abandon jihad as a means of eliminating Israel?

Unless the answer to all these questions is unequivocally yes, terrorists should have no role in elections, government, or Palestinian decision-making.

After October 7, 2023, the international community should be discussing how to remove Hamas and PIJ from Palestinian political and military life – not how to help them have seats in parliament.

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What Happens When You Apply “Decolonial” Theory to Arab History in Palestine? (Video)

(Originally published on my Substack)

I recently read an academic paper in Critical Education called “Decolonial Praxis: Confronting Genocide in Gaza with TribalCrit and Human Rights Education.” Its author, Sean Corrigan, argues that Tribal Critical Race Theory, a framework developed to analyze the experiences of Native Americans under colonialism, has “analytical potential” when transferred to Palestinians and Israelis. He combines it with Human Rights Education to teach students about Israeli “colonialism,” “white supremacy,” and “genocide,” explicitly with the goal of encouraging activism among students.

I thought this was a great idea. I just couldn’t understand why the analysis should start in the 20th century.

So I made a video called “Muslim Supremacy in Palestine, 638–2026: A TribalCrit / Human Rights Education Analysis.”

It is partly a spoof of contemporary academic jargon. But the history it teaches isn’t a spoof at all.

Because it is far easier to prove Muslim supremacy in the area of Palestine than Jewish supremacy.

Corrigan quotes the first principle of TribalCrit: “Colonization is endemic to society.” The framework asks us to look at conquest, political domination, unequal status, indigenous sovereignty and the way dominant societies normalize their own power.

OK, but the region has seen plenty of conquests.

Arab Muslim armies conquered Byzantine Palestine in the seventh century. Jerusalem came under Muslim sovereignty in 638 and again with Saladin.

Jews, who had been badly treated under Byzantine Christian rule, at times even excluded from Jerusalem, actually benefited in some ways from the Muslim conquest. They were again permitted to live in their ancient city. But they were not equals.

Jews and Christians became dhimmis: protected communities living under Muslim rule. Protection came with explicitly inferior political and legal status, special taxation and, depending on the period, restrictions on worship, public religious expression, dress and other aspects of life.

Even under the most benevolent Muslim rules, Jews and Christians still had fewer human rights than Muslims. The structure stayed the same.

If a society today divided its citizens by religion, gave one religion superior legal status, imposed special disabilities on the others and conditioned their protection on acknowledging the supremacy of the dominant group, any progressive would call this “apartheid.”

Which is why one slide asks: What would Human Rights Education call this today?

The video then looks at the durability of the assumption that Muslim sovereignty is the natural condition of Palestine, while non-Muslim sovereignty is an aberration that history will eventually correct.

Muslims eventually defeated the Crusaders and restored Muslim control of Jerusalem. Israel has repeatedly been compared in Arab and Islamist discourse to the Crusader states: an alien enclave that may survive for decades or even centuries but whose defeat is ultimately inevitable.

If Israel is another Crusader kingdom, accepting its existence today does not necessarily mean accepting its legitimacy. You can lose a battle, accept a temporary boundary and wait for Saladin.

That brings us directly to the PLO’s 1974 Ten-Point Program, commonly called the “stages plan.” It called for establishing Palestinian authority over any territory that could be obtained while continuing the struggle for the rest. Partial Palestinian sovereignty did not necessarily require permanent recognition of Jewish sovereignty.

This creates a question that almost never appears in decolonial analyses of the conflict:

Was the problem always that Palestinians lacked a state, or was one problem that accepting a Palestinian state next to Israel would mean accepting Jews as an equal sovereign people? This hypothesis explains facts that the usual colonial narrative has trouble with.

Anti-Jewish violence in Palestine preceded Israel. It preceded the settlements. It preceded the 1967 occupation. Jews were attacked at Nebi Musa in 1920 and massacred in Hebron in 1929.

Then came the Mufti of Jerusalem’s alliance with Nazi Germany.

Then came the repeated rhetoric of driving the Jews “into the sea.” I previously collected contemporaneous newspaper reports and a British Foreign Office document showing that this was not a Zionist invention created decades later. The same imagery appeared again in Egyptian propaganda in 1967.

The point is not that every Arab government had exactly the same war aims or that every Muslim wanted Jews dead. The point is what the rhetoric regarded as the proper outcome: Jewish sovereignty disappearing altogether.

Hamas eventually made the underlying religious claim explicit. Its original charter describes Palestine as an Islamic waqf, consecrated to Muslim generations until Judgment Day. Jews can exist. Christians can exist. But permanent Jewish sovereignty over Islamic land cannot.

That looks remarkably different when viewed through the same Human Rights Education framework Corrigan uses against Israel.

Corrigan describes TribalCrit as a framework concerned with indigenous peoples obtaining “sovereignty,” “autonomy,” “self-determination” and “self-identification.”

Yet Jews originated in this land. Their religion, national memory, calendar, language and historical consciousness remained centered on it throughout exile. Jewish communities continued to exist there under successive Roman, Byzantine, Muslim, Crusader, Mamluk, Ottoman and British rulers.

As soon as Jews recovered sovereignty, the decolonial vocabulary flips. Jewish power becomes colonialism. Jewish national self-determination becomes settler colonialism. Jewish sovereignty becomes supremacy.

The millennium of political arrangements in which Jews were subordinate to somebody else largely disappears from the analysis.

That is why the final line of the video says:

A society can normalize the supremacy of one community so deeply that the loss of that supremacy is later redescribed as colonization.

The presentation is deliberately provocative. Yet it is accurate. I’m just applying the same rules that progressives apply to Israeli Jews to Muslim Arabs throughout history.

Corrigan says TribalCrit is transferable. I transferred it. It produces some very interesting results.

Here’s the video.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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